We believe science creates barriers in aerospace and opportunities and shapes engineering, and helped improve our world. lives of countless communities. Many of these individuals are Countless scientific and still living and working today technological accomplishments across the country and around influence our lives and form the world. the framework for our modern society, and most are led by By making observations, asking individuals whose stories often questions, and striving to go untold. understand how aspects of our world are connected, each of As we honor Hispanic us is an explorer. At the Buffalo Heritage Month, we are Museum of Science, we hope all pleased to highlight people of our guests will be inspired whose groundbreaking to seek out hidden stories, and accomplishments contributed recognize their own potential to scientific understanding, to explore, to discover, and to eradicated disease, broke advance our society. MARIO MOLINA MEXICAN ›› CHEMIST “I am heartened and humbled that I was able to do something that not only contributed to our understanding of atmospheric chemistry, but also had a profound impact on the global environment.” Born in Mexico City, Mario Molina’s 1996, more than 20 years after he early interest in chemistry was first proposed the theory on the supported by his aunt, chemist impacts of CFCs. In 2003, he was Esther Molina. Together, they awarded the Presidential Medal of transformed one of the family’s Freedom for work as a “visionary bathrooms into a working laboratory. chemist and environmental scientist. While a postgraduate at University of California Irving, Molina became interested in chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) their impact on the atmosphere. His work on freon’s impact on ozone depletion identified CFCs as a cause of the “hole in the ozone layer,” which was discovered over Antarctica in 1983. Molina’s environmental work earned him a Nobel Prize in chemistry in FRANCE A. CÓRDOVA AMERICAN ›› ASTROPHYSICS “I encountered the usual people along the way that, because I was a woman, said science was too tough a career to go into,” she said. “But along with the help of my teachers and colleagues, I was driven by some inner force that wanted to know and understand nature and the universe. You have to be selective about the voices you listen to.” Born in Paris, France to a Mexican- In 1993, at age 46, she would go on to American father and an Irish- be the youngest person and the first American mother, France A. woman to become the Chief Scientist Córdova is an astrophysicist and at NASA. In 2014, she was confirmed science administrator. by the US Senate as the head of the National Science Foundation - a She received her Bachelor’s degree position she holds to this day. in English from Stanford University and began her career as a writer - she worked as a freelance journalist and even wrote a short novel. But after the Moon landing in 1969, she became fascinated with cosmology. In 1978, she earned a Ph.D. in Physics from the renowned California Institute of Technology. ELLEN OCHOA AMERICAN ›› ENGINEER, ASTRONAUT, & CLASSICAL FLAUTIST “I am committed to space flight, human exploration, learning how to do more and more. I like the fact that it is much bigger than myself, important to my country and to the world. I like being able to contribute in this way,” Raised in Southern California, missions, spending a total of over 40 Ellen Ochoa and her siblings were days in space. In 2013, she became brought up with an emphasis on the first Hispanic and second female the importance of education. She director of received a scholarship to Stanford the Johnson University, but declined in order to Space Center. stay near her mother in San Diego. She received her Bachelor’s degree in physics from San Diego State University before going on to earn her Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University. Ochoa applied three times to NASA’s astronaut program before being accepted. In 1991, she became the first Hispanic woman to go into space. She went on to fly four space JUAN MARTÍN MALDACENA ARGENTINIAN ›› THEORETICAL PHYSICS “I believe there is a God who created everything. I do not know how he did it exactly, but in my opinion God exists. He has a purpose for each of us that we must find or decipher...” Argentinian theoretical physicist quantum field theory and quantum Juan Martín Maldacena was always gravity - the two most important interested how things happened or theories of modern physics. worked. His parents thought that he Today, Maldacena continues his would naturally go into engineering. research on quantum physics and Instead, he enrolled instead in a black holes at Princeton’s Institute of physics program at the University of Advanced Studies. Buenos Aires and then went to the Balseiro Institute of the University of Cuyo - the best Experimental Physics center in Latin America. Continuing his doctoral work at Princeton and postdoctoral degrees at Rutgers and Harvard Universities, Maldacena’s work is distinguished as being the first to propose a fundamental relationship between SABRINA GONZALEZ PASTERSKI CUBAN-AMERICAN ›› HIGH ENERGY PHYSICS “I definitely feel like I have way more to do. It’s great to get recognition now, but hopefully it builds up to something. I’ll hopefully be right about having some kind of gut feeling that [will become] rather big at some point. Fingers crossed.” First-generation Cuban-American the Princeton Center for Theoretical Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski has been Science to continue her research widely hailed as the “next Einstein.” on the nature of gravity and space- At age 12, she built an aircraft engine time, especially the effects of gravity that is recognized by the FAA as on quantum fields. She has been the “Sabrina 0-200A.” At age 14, she cited by Stephen Hawking, and her became the youngest person to build papers have been added to Harvard's and fly their own aircraft. graduate curriculum. At age 16, Pasterski was accepted into MIT’s undergraduate program with advocacy from two professors who had seen videos of her rebuilding and flying her plane. She completed her undergraduate degree there in three years with a 5.0 GPA. Pasterski completed her PhD at Harvard in 2019 and moved on to ALBERT BÁEZ MEXICAN-AMERICAN ›› PHYSICS “I began getting the feeling that this was not the ultimate road to peace, for a physicist to spend the rest of his life designing the operations of war.” Born in Puebla, Mexico, Albert Báez From 1961 to 1967, he was the first grew up in Brooklyn, NY. While director of UNESCO’s science studying experimental physics at education program, which seeks Stanford, Báez and his graduate to improve science education in advisor Paul Kirkpatrick developed Latin America, Asia, Africa and the a way to focus x-rays. Today, this Middle East. technology is used by astronomers to take photographs of the galaxy, and by medical researchers to examine living cells. During the Cold War Arms Race, Báez’s skills were sought after by the defense industry. His pacifist beliefs led him to switch from physics research to physics education. He opposed the Vietnam War and embraced the 1960s protest movement alongside his daughters, folk singers Mimi Fariña and Joan Baez. CARLOS JUAN FINLAY CUBAN ›› EPIDEMIOLOGY Aedes aegypti mosquito species studied by Carlos Juan Finlay. Carlos Juan Finlay, Cuban physician transmit a disease. Twenty years and epidemiologist, made a discovery after he presented his findings, that led to one of the greatest they were verified by the Walter advances in modern hygiene. Reed Commission. The results of this study were instrumental As a practicing physician, Finlay in eliminating yellow fever from treated many patients with yellow Cuba and Panama, allowing for the fever - a viral infection that can cause completion jaundice and liver damage. At Finley’s of the time, a bad outbreak could kill Panama thousands of people. While treating Canal. his patients in Havana, he noticed that yellow fever epidemics coincided with Cuba’s mosquito season. This is the first time that mosquitos were identified as a way to SEVERO OCHOA SPANISH-AMERICAN ›› BIOCHEMISTRY “In these times, when the scientific literature has grown to such an extent that it is impossible to keep abreast of progress even in one’s own field, seminars, lectures, and other meetings are essential to keep informed.” Severo Ochoa de Albornoz, a Spanish- In 1959, Ochoa earned the 1959 Nobel American physician and biochemist, Prize in Physiology or Medicine is best known for discovering an Nobel Prize for his work on RNA enzyme that can synthesize RNA - a synthesis, which included the fundamental biological molecule that identification of PNPase, an enzyme converts information stored in DNA that helps to create RNA in a lab. into proteins. In 2003, ten years after his death, Ochoa’s methods of synthesizing RNA After studying medicine at the were instrumental to mapping the Madrid University Medican School, human genome. Ochoa researched physiology in Germany before returning to Spain in 1931. Five years later, Ochoa left Spain during the Spanish Civil War and, when research opportunities decreased in Europe due to World War II, he moved to the United States in 1942. YNÉS ENRIQUETTA JULIETTA MEXÍA MEXICAN-AMERICAN ›› BOTANY “I don’t think there’s any place in the world where a woman can’t venture alone. In all my travels I’ve never been attacked by a wild animal, lost my way or caught a disease,” Ynes Mexía, a Mexican-American Despite botanist and explorer, began her being a “late career in 1925 at the age of 55. She bloomer,” she became a member of the Sierra Club, collected more which prompted her to enroll in than 145,000 botany classes at the University of specimens, California in Berkeley at the age of 51.